Eyes On Us

It’s normal to get nervous when you have to speak in front of crowd or perform for an audience. But how often is someone watching us and we’re not even aware of it?

Last week our company participated in a food drive to support a local charity near our office called “South County Outreach”.  It started with my wife asking our employees to form into teams and announcing that we had two weeks to collect as much food as possible, either by purchasing it with our own money, or getting friends or family to donate food. She made it fun by making it into a competition and telling everyone there would be a prize for the team that brought in the most food. Twelve of our employees paired up into six teams and my wife I joined together to form the seventh team. We not only had fun obtaining and delivering hundreds of pounds of food, we were also humbled by the awesome generosity of so many of our employees.

One of our employees, Kai, does a lot of charity work in his spare time anyway so this was a project that was right up his alley. From the day the food drive started Kai was passionate about the cause and his enthusiasm soon became contagious. His bright smile, positive attitude and infectious and passionate desire to help those in need kept everyone focused on the goal at hand. When the food drive was completed, we had collected nearly 500 hundred pounds of food, which we loaded onto a company truck for delivery. Everyone involved got to follow the delivery truck to the Outreach and help with the unloading and sorting at the food pantry area. When we returned to the office, everyone also made it clear that it was Kai who made the food drive a success with his passion and humble devotion to the project.

                                                                                                                                     

Here’s the funny thing. Kai is not an outspoken person, nor is he in a leadership role in our company. Yet, Kai has a gift, the gift of selflessness, and when given a chance to use that gift…he became passionate about it. It’s like a light when on inside him and that light led the way for others to follow. I doubt Kai realized how many people were watching him and how much they were affected by his actions in a positive way.

And that got me thinking…. If we realize that our behavior can be contagious and remember that we are always on display, that there are always eyes on us, it might help us to maintain a better attitude, especially since human eyes are not the only that are always on us.

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

                                     ~William James